My daughter took SAT and her only one back in April and got a 1300 and is refusing to take another one!! She is applying to art schools. I know most scholarships are merit based and a better SAT score helps, but do the colleges care if she hasnt taken it at least twice? We signed her up but now she wants us to cancel it. She has not prepared and feels that her score will fall. 
No. Many students take it once.
Good for her - one and done. Her score is fine for art schools. She does not need to take it again. Relax, breathe and follow her lead. There is not need to get involved in the craziness of the process. 1300 is a good score.
We got the same advice that once is fine. DS does well on standardized tests but gets stressed (& has a very heavy academic load and focused alot of study time on APs instead).
Plan was to retake one as necessary this fall, but heâs already working on several Early Action application and doesnât want to retake. He got good solid scores on ACT and SAT, so he decided not to retake since itâs not worth the stress and heâs already working on several Early Action applications.
I wouldnât worry about taking it again.
Itâs not about taking it again, thereâs no âneedâ to take it x times. But right now youâre only dealing with the 1300. A lot depends on what art colleges and how competitive she is otherwise. Look at the 75th percentile for her targets.
@ArtAngst That is what I heard from my kid that she wants to focus on her classes and her portfolio and doing the applications now. My concern is her score is not that great and def could get better since she took a cold test last time with 0 preparation. I know admission wise she is probably fine with art schools but scholarships which are merit based is what we were thinking about. (that is our biggest concern that even if she gets accepted we cant afford it for the lack of scholarship)
She told us she is positive that scores wont get better if she retakes as she did no prep this time either 
I dont have someone easy to deal with here. Stress is the biggest factor here too and it kills her productive times days before the test.
We cancelled it this morning @gouf78 @lookingforward competitive she is not. She will do her best in what she knows is her thing and usually does good.
She took 6 AP classes in her junior year and has 4 and 5s in them so i am assuming she is good there. She has more this year. And she will finish all her applications by Dec this year. That is the plan.
Great on the AP classes! For art schools most AP credit is accepted UNLESS it is AP Art. Works great because it reduces the gen ed work load.
She did take AP art among the others and that wont be accepted. However since they had to build a portfolio, we are hoping she can select some from there for her portfolio submission now. The AP classes also help to raise the overall GPA.
As a parent I am still a bit bothered about her SAT score and that she could have done better.
My youngest only took the SAT once and got into every university that she applied to, with significant merit aid.
Whether 1300 is a great score or an okay score is going to depend upon where she is going to apply. However, I am not a big fan of taking the SAT more than once unless the student does a significant amount of preparation before taking it the second time. I would expect that art schools would care a lot more about her art portfolio.
Senior year is a very stressful time for high school students, and I would be inclined to err in the direction of not adding any more stress to your studentâs life.
All these conversation makes me feel a little better. That was her argument: if she had not prepared (again) there are chances that her score wont do any better or even could go down. Anyway at least she can focus on the applications and essays and her portfolio now. Most schools that she will apply to (I have posted in another thread) a 1300 sounds good for admission⌠not sure about RISD. But I always think scholarship requirement (at least a good enough one where we can afford without a loan) would want to look at a better score. But time will speak I guess
If it helps, my oldest had same approach/attitude. She did not prep at all and we were kinda POd with her since we know she does well academically and assumed it would determine merit aid packages etc. We had long talks about âgaming the systemâ to get more money etc but she procrastinated and went in cold to the tests.
She did ok on SATs (I think 1340) and a bit higher in the ACTs BUT everything else in her academic record would imply that she should have done MUCH better. So we nudged her to take the ACTs again (and I donâ't think she prepped much that time either)âŚwent up in some and down in others so her composite score remained exactly the same.
But like your DD, she had lots of APs and did very well in all of them, GPA was high etc and had a solid portfolio (spent alot of her Fall of senior year really bulking it up)âŚsoooâŚas much as I thought she should have applied herself more to the SAT and ACT in my worry over her getting in and getting needed merit aid $âŚshe did get accepted everywhere she applied and got a big chunk of $ from RISD (and is about the enter her junior year there).
So my guess is they looked at her more holistically and werenât thrown by her test scores.
Her brother took them cold too, but blew her SAT scores out of the water - so I have no reason/ground to stand on to bug him to take them again. 
That does help calm myself down @ArtAngst 
the High school she goes to is competitive and it would be joke among the student circle of her standard to have taken the SAT just once and that too got âonly a 1300â. Kids are going crazy taking classes practicing and discussing and mine totally avoids every bit of. There are not many students applying to art schools so there is not much information either. All my learning happened here.
Wow to RISD! We saw their average sat and my daughter wasnât even wanting to apply saying she is not good enough!
Just saying. CCusually says look at the 75th percentile. Above you seem to say sheâs not otherwise competitive?
@SomaRathore my kids go to a similarly HIGHLY academically competitive high school and both have peers who have taken the tests whatâs to me a crazy amount of times (but are also gunning for near perfect scores). So although my kids are in classes/peers with them, I think they were both burnt out a bit test wise (especially since their school really preps them for APs) and it IS logical that they focused on their art/portfolios instead. And RISD took some APs that have helped DD find time in her schedule for a minor (since she got some humanities requirements out of the way).
And yes, we did a lot of our research and learning here and other online resourcesâŚand I have a BFA and our family has lots of working artists BUT thereâs so much to art school applications! My kids have art teachers that are helpful, but they really had to take the initiative with all of their applications with their guidance counselors etc.
Iâm 0 for 2 on getting kids to study and get the score they are capable of. Both did take the ACT twice, both times pretty much cold. Oldest got the automatic scholarship he wanted and decided the next level was unrealistic so he stopped trying. Little brother was a recruited athlete and got the minimum score coaches told him he needed.
Both improved just 1 point on their retake without any study. So if she isnât studying, she is probably right that a retake is a waste of time. It was for us.
@lookingforward I did chk the percentile for the 1300 and in a lot of schools she in the middle, about 60? in others she falls in the 75th range. a small number like RISD she would be in the 25th.
No she is not competitive. While she will give her best to what she does (rather what she likes to do) its not becoz she is competitive, but more for herself. Saying that her art teachers pushed her to participate in competitions and Vase and gallery submissions. But that is something she would never volunteer to do out of her own will. I dont know if that is good or bad. And she is not much a person who loves to socialize.
OP. Competitive as in a good match for the college. I misunderstood your prior comment.
@lookingforward I think it was me who misunderstood
Both my Dâs took the SAT additional timesâwithout studying anymoreâand had their scores go up significantly enough that I advise students to take it more than once. My older D went up over 100 points in writing (660 to 780) and my younger D went from a 650 to a 720 in Reading.